Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

A History Lesson

3 Comments

…for Senator Shelby:

I understand the Senator’s need and desire to to protect the jobs of his constituents at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center, but attempting to force an either/or choice between Federal and commercial space transportation is not the answer. That’s as false a choice as Moon vs. Mars and manned vs. robotic space exploration. Both NASA and NewSpace have valid and valuable roles to play, so let’s please not waste time and energy creating a schism where one need not exist.

Well, actually, while that’s true for wealth-producing activities, which is a non-zero-sum game, when the only real goal is job (and not wealth) creation, it is a zero-sum game with a fixed federal budget. So it’s not surprising that Shelby, a man of few political principles other than getting reelected, will make the choice that he thinks best achieves that goal, history and reality be damned. I guess Elon should have invested in a production facility in Huntsville.

Political Commentary, Science And Society

Food Fascists

9 Comments

…in California:

The state is in fiscal collapse, so the California legislature is doing what it does best–finding new things to regulate….

…If it becomes law, AB 627 would require low-fat or skim milk to be served to children 2 years old and older. It would limit sugar in cereals and eliminate deep frying and sweetened drinks. It also would establish an 18-month pilot project to evaluate stronger nutrition and physical activities standards.

What’s really appalling about this is (like many legislative mandates) it’s based on junk science. I’m aware of zero evidence that childhood obesity is caused by whole milk (or dietary fat in general). They should definitely try to reduce the carbs, but I think that kids’ biggest problem is lack of exercise. If they moved more, they would burn off the sugar, the way we did when we were kids.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Unimpressed

5 Comments

Thoughts from Lileks on Letterman:

What’s amusing is how unamusing he is in the clip. How sour he seems. Compare him to his predecessors: Carson was all midwestern charm, with unreadable yet mannerly reserve; Steve Allen was almost as smart as he was certain you thought he must be, but he was cheerful; Parr was a nattering nutball covered with a rich creamy nougat of ego, but he was engaging. Letterman is empty; he’s inert; he stands for nothing except disdain for people foolish enough to stand for anything – aside from rote obesciance to all the things Decent People stand for, of course, all those shopworn assumptions passed around in the bubble.

This posture was fresh in ’80; it even had energy. But it paralyzes the heart after a while. You end up an SOB who shows up at the end of the night to reassure that nothing matters. I think he may have invented the posture of Nerd Cool, an aspect so familiar to anyone who reads message boards – the skill at deflating enthusiasm, puncturing passion with a hatpin lobbed from a safe distance. The instinctive unease with the wet messy energy of actual people.

Yes, reading too much into it. Really, it’s just a rote slam: If your mother is a loathed politician, and your older sister gets pregnant, famous old men can make jokes about you being knocked up by rich baseball players, and there’s nothing you can do. That’s the culture: a flat, dead-eyed, square-headed old man who’ll go back to the writers and ask for more Palin-daughter knocked-up jokes, because that one went over well. Other children he won’t touch, but not because he’s decent. It’s because he’s a coward.

I’ve never had any use for him, myself. But I’ve never been much into late-night “comedy,” period.

[Update a few minutes later]

Why aren’t feminists upset with Dave?

Because they’re leftists first, true feminists a distant second. And besides, Sarah Palin isn’t a real woman and of course, by extension, neither is her fourteen-year-old daughter. So they’re fair game.

[Mid-morning update]

Little Miss Atilla pulls no punches:

This is American Sharia, a**holes. The practitioners of Sharia in Muslim countries are at least consistent in their contempt for women and in their practice of gender apartheid: you, on the other hand, want sexual slavery for some women in this country; others, whose opinions you prefer, can live in relative peace and freedom. You will allow it.

If you are giving women and girls the “gift” of not being badgered for being female, and threatened with misogyny and sexual assault, they are not truly free—only living in a state of grace, contingent upon performing the right tricks, spouting leftist verbiage like seals at Sea World, balancing balls on their noses in the hopes of getting fish thrown into their mouths.

And any woman who doesn’t understand this fundamental truth about the misogynists living among them could be in for a rude awakening at any point, because that attitude will infect those who harbor it.

The leftist men in the sixties were notorious for their sexism and misogyny, considering women only useful for cooking and sex, while they wrote their manifestos. In fact, the feminist backlash in the seventies against “male chauvinist pigs” was a direct result of the experience of many of the women in the sixties with their “progressive” male cohorts. Some of them never grew up. Letterman is of that generation.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire

The New Funemployed

1 Comment

Iowahawk does investigative journalism as only he can:

Melissa Browning, 34, is another funemployed L.A. single who has found new meaning in prostitution. After losing her job as a program coordinator for a non-profit Feng Shui education group in late March, Browning decided to go on a three-week interstate highway trek through the truckstops of central Arkansas with two friends, earning up to $30 per night while sleeping in tent-like yurts.

“I used to be so absorbed in the details of work, but prostitution has allowed me to come out of my shell,” Browning said. “Now it’s just so much easier for me approach new people, in idling semis, at 2 am. It’s just gives you such a positive pro-active outlook. I guess that’s why it’s called pro-stitution.”

Joining the world’s oldest profession has also given Browning the chance to reflect and contemplate. “Do we work to live or do we live to work? Do I have life goals that are not work goals?” asks Browning. “I guess what I’d really like to know is, who bogarted my meth?”

Both Martinez and Browning discovered that they like themselves better when they’re being consumed by hunger rather than their jobs.

“This is the best version of me,” Martinez said, adding that despite a distended belly and massive hair and tooth loss, she feels “completely healthy,” relaxed and focused.

“I used to talk a lot about living a ‘greener lifestyle,’ and now I’m finally doing it,” she said. “I’ve given up my car and I’m spending almost all of my time outdoors, surrounded by the beauty and insects of nature. And when I haven’t eaten in 4 or 5 days, I can look up into the sun and see angels. It’s very spiritual.”…

…After losing his job as ObamaSticker.com’s director of halo design, Smalley said he purchased a laptop and began gambling his 401k on internet poker from his parent’s couch, “which my dad doesn’t understand.”

“Everytime I lose a hand, my dad looks at me nervously and asks how much money I have left, or if I’m planning to eat him,” said Smalley. “I mean, come on, it’ll be at least 4 or 5 weeks before I get that desperate.”

And of course, they should be grateful to The One for their new opportunities:

“Recession is a great opportuning for people to get outside, enjoy a sunny park bench, and have fun,” said Robert Lester, a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Business. “And President Obama is making that kind of fun possible for more and more people every day.”…

…For many younger people, Dwight said, work is less central to their lives. According to her surveys, more and more young people are saying they are willing to trade off a high pay, high pressure job for one with flexible schedules and a lot of vacation time. “The new Admistration has been very responsive to that — just look at all the millions of new jobs with zero salaries and 52 week vacations,” said Dwight, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Colorado.

Happy days are here again.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Stop Calling The BNP “Far Right”

8 Comments

So says Daniel Hannan, who is one of the few British politicians who seems to be a genuine classical liberal. While the “right” won in Europe yesterday (and isn’t it interesting that socialism is on the decline over there at the same time it’s on the rapid increase on this side of the pond?), the minor victory of the British National Party is not part of it. Like their Nazi namesakes in Germany in the thirties, they are fascists, and leftists. As Hannan notes, the press insists on calling them “right wing” not to make them look bad, but to make the true right wing look bad.

[Update early afternoon]

I wonder to what degree yesterday’s elections in Europe are a harbinger for November, 2010? I think it depends a lot on how non-stupid the Republicans can be. So there’s an excellent opportunity for a missed opportunity.

[Update a few minutes later]

Daniel Hannan’s prediction about the voters soon having their say came true. Gordon Brown is indeed the devalued prime minister of a devalued government.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Guantanamo

4 Comments

…as a state-sponsored madrasah:

if we think it probable or possible that a man would only mutate into such a monster after undergoing the Guantanamo experience, then I can suggest one reason why that might be. Nothing prepared me for the way in which the authorities at the camp have allowed the most extreme religious cultists among the inmates to be the organizers of the prisoners’ daily routine. Suppose that you were a secular or unfanatical person caught in the net by mistake; you would still find yourself being compelled to pray five times a day (the guards are not permitted to interrupt), to have a Quran in your cell, and to eat food prepared to halal (or Sharia) standards. I suppose you could ask to abstain, but, in such a case, I wouldn’t much fancy your chances. The officers in charge were so pleased by this ability to show off their extreme broad-mindedness in respect of Islam that they looked almost hurt when I asked how they justified the use of taxpayers’ money to create an institution dedicated to the fervent practice of the most extreme version of just one religion. To the huge list of reasons to close down Guantanamo, add this: It’s a state-sponsored madrasah.

Of course, I don’t think that’s an excuse to shut down Gitmo, but it is an excuse to rethink our “tolerance” of the totalitarian ideology with which we’re at war, but won’t admit it. I can only shake my head at the insanity of those who thought that the Bush administration was too hard on radical Islam. Would we handing out copies of Mein Kampf to German POWs during the war (ignoring the fact, of course, that these are not POWs but illegal combatants)?

And more on the president’s naivety and historical ignorance:

The same near-masochistic insistence on taking the extreme as the norm was also present in Obama’s smoothly delivered speech in the Egyptian capital. Some of what he said was well-intentioned if ill-informed. The United States should not have overthrown the elected government of Iran in 1953, but when it did so, it used bribed mullahs and ayatollahs to whip up anti-Communist sentiment against a secular regime. The John Adams administration in the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli did indeed proclaim that the United States had no quarrel with Islam as such (and, even more important, that the United States itself was in no sense a Christian nation), but the treaty failed to stop the Barbary states from invoking the Quran as permission to kidnap and enslave travelers on the high seas, and thus Thomas Jefferson was later compelled to send a fleet and the Marines to put down the trade. One hopes that Obama does not prefer Adams to Jefferson in this regard.

Any person with the smallest pretense to cultural literacy knows that there is no such place or thing as “the Muslim world,” or, rather, that it consists of many places and many things. (It is precisely the aim of the jihadists to bring it all under one rulership preparatory to making Islam the world’s only religion.) But Obama said nothing about the schism between Sunni and Shiites, or about the argument over Sufism, or about Ahmadi and Ismaili forms of worship and practice. All this was conceded to the umma: the highly ideological notion that a person is first and foremost defined by their adherence to a religion and that all concepts of citizenship and rights take second place to this theocratic diktat. Nothing could be more reactionary.

That would be too politically inconvenient to mention.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Saved Or Created”

Fictional job numbers from the administration? I’m shocked. Of course, if we had a press corps that was a watchdog, instead of a lapdog, they wouldn’t continue to get away with this sophistry.

[Update a few minutes later]

“Drop dead, American business:”

So the question is, why does Obama advocate a policy that so flies in the face of everything that economists have learned? How could Obama possibly say, as he did last month, that he wants “to see our companies remain the most competitive in the world. But the way to make sure that happens is not to reward our companies for moving jobs off our shores or transferring profits to overseas tax havens?” Further, how could Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner call a practice that top scholarship has shown increases wages and employment in the U.S. “indefensible?”

I have to admit I am at a loss. Maybe it is good politics to bash American corporations, and Obama isn’t really serious about making this change happen. But if the change is enacted, and domestic corporate taxes aren’t reduced to offset the big tax hike, the result will be a flight from the U.S. that rivals in scale the greatest avian arctic migrations.

As I said yesterday, it’s Munchausen By Proxy. By keeping the economy permanently sick, they hope to entrench their power, as FDR did.

[Update early afternoon]

Cue the laughter. It’s pretty sad when Chinese students are a lot more business savvy, and understand basic economics better than our own home-grown press. Or the US Secretary of the Treasury…

Political Commentary, Space

Constellation Problems, Continued

10 Comments

“Rocketman” has thoughts related to yesterday’s post, here, and more details on last week’s Ames meeting:

First up for review was the preferred solution of a single plane attenuation system. It was believed to be the lightest weight band-aid available for the already overweight and underperforming stick. Architectural changes made to the segmented spaghetti-like stack have made it stiffer. That had the unfortunate side-effect of sending increased loads up to the crew compartment. Those loads are even higher than the seat-of-the-pants requirements loosened by fiat (and loosey-goosey analysis) from the accepted Gemini era 0.25 g peak to almost three times that value (0.7 g).

Scratch the goateed one’s favorite solution.

I know it’s popular and easy for some who don’t understand physics and engineering to say, “well we had problems on program X, and we managed to solve them,” without understanding that there are some technical problems that simply have no solution, regardless of how much time and money is put into them. Sometimes, all the potential solutions simply introduce new problems, or make the old ones worse, and you end up chasing your tail and failing to get the design to close. I don’t know if the Ares thrust-oscillation problem falls in that category, but the possibility cannot be excluded, and so far, it’s looking that way. And when that happens, the only solution is to go back to the drawing board, and start with a different concept.

A good engineer will recognize such problems early, and not waste too much time and money trying to solve them. As Einstein once said, a clever man will solve a problem — a wise man will avoid it. We had, and still have, at least for now, people running NASA’s human spaceflight development program who (as the Brits would say) are too clever by half.

Rocketman also thinks that the writing is on the wall:

All hailed and praised the rocket scientist with more degrees than fingers on our right hands. As the Kool-Aid flowed, we reveled in the plans to renew the minions’ skills for building cathedrals to the sky. We marveled at the safety numbers that flew out of the supercomputers. And we ignored the mounting number of little things that were “normal for a development program.” The steroids flowed, the oscillations increased, and the dollars disappeared.

Fast forward five years with nothing to show for the investments made so far. “Wait a little longer,” they say. “We’re getting our arms around this.” And the congressfolk from Florida push for more money to shower over the falls. And the Senator from Alabama holds up any investments in commercial opportunities so that his precious voters will hold on to their jobs.

But it is already too late. Indeed, the seal on the codex has been broken. All the President’s men do not carry rose colored glasses around with them. They see the forest for the trees.

Clark Lindsey has a summary of a Space News editorial by Bob Bigelow, that would appear to be explaining what should have been obvious to the Senator from Huntsville (who is also the Senator from Decatur, so I continue to be baffled why he doesn’t want to ramp up EELV production).

/– Talks about the overruns in Constellation
/– “Constellation appears to be yet another ill-conceived NASA boondoggle suffering from all too familiar runaway costs.”
/– Talks about the serious technical problems with Ares/Orion
/– Criticizes the reduction of Orion from 6 to 4 passengers.
/– Gives a vigorous defense of the accomplishments of SpaceX and its potential to provide low cost launch access.
/– Says Shelby made an error in ignoring the commercial access capabilities of the Atlas V, which is produced in Alabama.
/– “Bigelow Aerospace has studied human-rating of the Atlas 5 and found the concept to be both viable and economically attractive.”
/– The high reliability of the Atlas V undercuts Shelby’s comments about commercial launchers.
/– “Commercial crew transport, as demonstrated by SpaceX’s dramatic progress and the existing Atlas 5 launcher, represents a viable, affordable, and robust path forward.”
/– Talks about the many launch vehicle project failures at NASA.
/– “Moreover, to hear a Republican senator espouse the virtues of a bloated, costly government program over innovative commercial concepts is so paradoxical that it requires no further comment from me.”

Hey, since when did Republicans care about business, or markets? Not when it doesn’t suit their parochial political interests, for sure.

Norm Augustine and his panel have quite the challenge ahead of them.